"A bane to the Iapygians": Greek-indigenous relations in southeast Italy

Both Diodorus Siculus (8.21) and Strabo (6.3.2) preserve an account of the Tarentine foundation Oracle in which it is foretold where the city would be established and that it will be a “bane to the Iapygians”. While we need not necessarily accept that these sources are an accurate record of an Oracle given to the founders of Tarentum in the late eighth century BC, they, nevertheless, indicate that, at some point, hostility towards the city’s indigenous neighbours became a core part of Tarentine identity. It is not uncommon for origin stories to invoke divine support for a population’s claim over its territory; however, it is very unusual to maintain that enmity with one’s neighbours has the sanction of the gods. It suggests that hostility towards the Iapygians was almost as fundamental a part of Tarentine identity as the landscape which they occupied. Consequently, scholars of Magna Graecia have tended to regard enmity towards the indigenous populations as Tarentum’s default political position. As Tarentum was the leader of the Italiote League, the actions of the League are often interpreted in the same terms.

However, the texts containing the Oracle’s prediction beg certain key questions, such as when did this animosity become so ingrained that it deserved to be enshrined in the city’s origin myth; and did the name “Iapygian” apply to a single indigenous tribe, as some ancient sources imply (e.g. Paus. 10.13.10) or was it a blanket term for all the indigenous peoples of southeast Italy, as it is more commonly applied (e.g. Hdt. 7.170; Polyb. 3.88). If the latter, the Oracle would imply that the gods required the Tarentines to be hostile to all indigenous peoples of southeast, whereas the former would restrict their animosity to a particular geographical area, albeit one that is hard to define precisely in the modern world.

Using both archaeological and historical sources, this chapter seeks to provide a nuanced picture of Greek-indigenous relations in southeast Italy in the period between the foundation of Tarentum and the Roman conquest in 272 BC. It argues that ethnic difference, while not irrelevant, was not the sole defining factor in the relationships between the different populations. It could be exploited as a way of pronouncing the distance between peoples when the social, economic, and/or political circumstances promoted hostility over peaceful interactions while, at other times, it could be downplayed and the connections between the populations emphasised.